the
peculiar actions of a man on horseback, who was approaching the house
from the direction in which her husband and the vaqueros had
disappeared. That which summoned her attention was the fact that the
man was approaching by an irregular route, which no ordinary
circumstance would have required. He had such a way of keeping behind
the trees that she could not determine his identity. It looked strange
and mysterious, and something impelled her to drop the lace curtain
over the window, for behind it she could watch without danger of being
seen.

The horseman disappeared, and this made her uneasiness all the greater,
but she said nothing to Alice. Soon she noticed the man on foot
approaching the house, in a watchful, skulking fashion, slipping from
one tree or one bit of shrubbery to another. Then, with a swift run, he
came near, and, stealthily and noiselessly as a cat, began to ascend to
her window by clambering up the wistaria-vine. Her spirit quailed and
her cheeks blanched when she saw the naked blade of a dagger held
between his teeth. She understood his mission--it was her life and the
gold; and the glittering eyes of the robber she recognized as those of
Basilio Velasco. After a moment of nerveless terror the ancient
resisting blood of the Ovandos sprang into alert activity, and this
gentlest and sweetest of young women armed her soul to meet Death on
his own ground and his own terms, and try the issue with him.

She gave no alarm, for there was none in the house except herself and
Alice. To have given way to fear would have destroyed her only hope of
life. Quietly, in a low tone, she said,--

"Alice, listen, but do not say a word." There was an impressiveness in
her manner that startled the nervous, timid girl; but there were also
in it a strength and a self-reliance that reassured her. She dropped
her work and regarded her mistress with wonder. "Look in the second
drawer of the bureau. You will find a pistol there. Bring it to me
quickly, without a word, for a man is clambering up the vine under my
window to rob me, and if we make any outcry or lose our heads we are
dead. Place full confidence in me, and it will be all right."

Alice, numb and nervous with fear, found the pistol and brought it to
her mistress.

"Go and sit down and keep quiet," she was told; and this she did.

Violante, seeing that the weapon was loaded, cocked it, and glanced out
the window. Basilio was climbing very slowly and careful